it's a long road home
by daughter-of-october
Summary: [Characters: Lei Yao, Jun Li, Chao, Fu] # Summary: It is not easy at all.
1. leaving rooms and slamming doors

**_leaving rooms and slamming doors_**

**Characters**: Fu, Lan Fan, Jun Li, their family

**Summary**: She has her own way of going without leaving.

* * *

He has been so proud of her, of the scarlet dragon. He has watched her career at the Imperial Court with a faint smile, approving of her professional behaviour and the steady way she wields her numerous weapons.

But this has been long ago, before she has brought shame over their family.

She sits in the tea room, her scarlet dress wrapped around her as a small hand holds the fragile cup. Her entire appearance belies her abilities and this angers him greatly he has not raised some puny little beauty queen. He has raised a warrior, someone to hold her own against any opponent. To see her there, drinking tea like some noble little girl is insulting. He has been easy on her since she has returned – well, he has been mostly away for the past few months – because while she has greatly stained their family's honour, she is still his granddaughter and he respects her enough to refrain from a challenge while she is pregnant.

She raises her head as his shadow falls onto her and acknowledges his presence. "Grandfather," she says as she rises to her feet. "Is there something you want to discuss with me?"

He bites his lip before he mentions towards the inner yard. "Get your weapon, Jun Li, it's time for you to prove that you are no longer the weak little girl you seemed to be for the past months," he says gruffly because he wants to believe in her again, he wants proof that she had outgrown the state of utter ridiculousness, that she can hold her own against him. She has been able to, back then, before she has embarrassed herself and everyone else, and a part of him wishes for her to be just as strong as she used to be.

"Is this truly necessary?" his grandson asks, rocking the baby back and forth.

Chao is a dear boy, a loyal member of the family and a good fighter but he has this weak spot for his cousin – as seen best in his ridiculous attempts to calm her down when she has been crying in her room, repeating over and over again that she has not meant to become pregnant, that she has not meant to dishonour her entire family.

"This is necessary," Fu replies as he nods at his grandson. "Did she tell you what she plans to do now that she cannot return to the court?"

"She refuses to share her thoughts … but I fear that she plans on leaving us again."

"What about … her?" he asks, mentioning towards the baby. "No matter what, Jun Li can't plan on taking the child with her when she disappears on us."

"I did promise to become Min Li's protector," Chao replies, smiling at the little girl on his arm. "I would like to keep this promise, no matter what will happen. My health doesn't allow hard work anyway and, well, I'd be a terrible guard for the prince."

"You don't make me happy either, Chao," Fu complains as they reached the yard. "At least, she hurried up a little bit … but why didn't she change."

"A dress offers many possibilities to hide weaponry," his grandson shrugs as he smoothly moves onto his place next to Lan Fan who watches the on-goings with wide-eyed confusion.

Jun Li bows sharply and Fu bows back at her while he wonders if she was truly ready to fight again. The birth of her daughter has taken a toll on her and it has been only three weeks ago. And yet, her hair is bound to a low ponytail that swings back and forth as she circles around him, looking for a non-existent opening, forever lacking the patience a guard is supposed to have.

And yet, she is not the first one to attack. He is still a tad bit faster _even though he knows that she will surpass him one day soon_ and her sword elegantly blocks his attack before they start a dance of quick moves and sharp blades, a fight that might have ended lethal for lesser warriors but they are still on top of their games and she spins and he dodges and they are perfectly in synch for a moment.

He wonders why it cannot be always like this, why they are only in harmony in the middle of a fight and then, suddenly, her lips twitch and her hand twists her sword, blocking his attack and then there is a kunai on his throat, cold and deathly. "I apologise, grandfather," she says as the kunai disappears somewhere in her wide sleeve. "Life at the court taught me some neat tricks."

She takes the obligatory step back and bows low but for a moment, Fu wonders why she has used a kunai. Her style has hardly incorporated kunai before after all.

But he does not ask and she nods at him before she rushes away in a whirlwind of scarlet and crimson. He sighs and decides to take a short nap before dinner but he awakes too soon.

A maid stands in the doorway of his room, fiddling with her hands and biting her lips. "Jun Li-sama did not return from her walk," she says, looking at the ground. "Chao-sama and Lan Fan-sama have searched the area but … they couldn't find her."

He curses and wonders why he has to be cursed with those stubborn brats and why his son had to die before he could raise his eldest daughter probably. But no matter what, he gets up and follows the young woman into the tea room where Lan Fan and Chao stand, visibly unhappy. "So?" he asks. "Jun Li did not return from her walk. She can take care of herself."

"We had someone from the Cho-clan running a search in a bigger areal than the one we can cover," his remaining son, Chao's father Zan, replies as he shrugs. "According to them, she either left the radius of fifty miles or … she hides her chi pattern."

"Jun Li hates to hide her pattern and … one of the horses is missing," Chao adds, voice hollow and face strangely empty. "Plus, her entire money is missing as well."

"She … she … she won't come home," Lan Fan says weakly as she fiddles with her hair sticks which have most likely fallen out of her hair while she has been looking for her sister.

Fu growls because this is too much like Jun Li to consider another possibility. She has always been one to disappear without a warning and ever since she has returned, she has seemed strangely distanced, nearly as if she has never been truly there. He has tried to give her space now because he has nearly suffocated her before and god, he wants to fix things with her but he has seen no way to fix their relationship while she has needed the mending.

"Father, we are waiting," Zan says softly as he smoothes out the wrinkles of his tunic.

"Let her run – she will come home when she feels ready," he replies even though he knows that this will take years if not decades. Jun Li has been heartbroken, shattered when she has returned to their house and he knows her and her habit of nursing her wounds far longer than any normal person would. Before she would return, even her emotional scars would have vanished,

That day, he knows that Min Li would grow up without her mother but with a loving guardian. He knows that Lan Fan will never hear another goodnight story from her sister and that the room at the southern end of the building would be empty for many years to come. He also knows that he would never complain about her habit to dress in red again because he would never see her again in that colour.

Yes, Fu knows that he would be long dead by the time the scarlet dragon would return to Xing – because she has left the country because every fool would remember her for the next twenty years and beyond – and he feels strangely okay with this fact.

They will never meet again and he knows but her spirit will accompany him all the same.


	2. still fighting dragons with you

**_still fighting dragons with you_**

* * *

**Characters**: Lei Yao, Jun Li

**Summary**: To him, she was irreplaceable.

**Additional** to 'you are the silence in between'

**Companion**: 'in a city so dead'

* * *

He sits on a chair in the ballroom, watches the twirling and circling couples and sighs deeply. He would have skipped this entire farce but this is his brother's ball and he has some obligation to attend even though it only makes his head ache because the ladies use too much perfume.

The corners of his mouth twitch as he catches sight of an overweight man who dances with the agility of a bear before he spots one of the bodyguards who had been ordered to mingle with the crowd to be closer to the assassins. The woman in question has to be a member of the Dragon Warriors, the elite forces because her tattoo shines through but Lei would not say anything against it because the tattoo was known for being nearly impossible to hide.

Painted dragons, scarlet dresses – things he remembers just too well because they would be forever connected to her in his mind. Add that song she has been singing to herself for years and the three things that made her the one he had loved for so long would be named.

Once upon a time, the prince in his ivory tower has met an unpredictable girl with a tongue as sharp as the weapons she wielded. She has been a challenge, shy and reserved at first but with a passionate fire inside. She has become his protector along the years, his friend and lover. And after one point, she has been the only one who mattered, the only one to hold him warm and safe when autumn storms raged, the only one to come with him when he visited his mother's grave in the coldest weeks of winter, the only one allowed to ride his horse when she departed for a war and the only one to touch him, to let her graceful fingers dance across his chest.

He misses her because she would have grabbed his hand and dragged him outside to take a walk in the garden as soon as she had noticed his discomfort and her voice has always been a pleasant one instead of this high-pitched squealing he had to listen to now.

But she has left and no matter how much he wants the opposite, wishful thinking will never bring her back home.

His memory tortures him, replays the better days, the days full of carefree laughter, the days of running across the golden steppes, the days of bathing in hot springs they had just discovered. She is far away now and those days have long passed but even ember is still glowing somehow and so is his heart, the heart her name was engraved on, the heart that refuses to forget her, the heart that glows with love and passion.

Sometimes, when he sits in the gardens, he conjures the memories all over again, always forgetting about the bitter days. He does know that it was not as easy as he tries to make himself believe that it had been always only nice and beautiful but then again, it has been perfect. She has been the number one on any list he had made, the only one he has ever considered to be the empress to his empire, the only one he has ever viewed as fitting to be the mother of his children.

She still is.

She is still the only one he can tolerate to stand by his side, the only one he could imagine to be his wife and she is the mother of his only child, the estranged daughter who clings to her guardian in a way that would make it cruel to separate them.

And this is why he refuses to allow anyone to get close to him and discourages any attempts to marry him off. Some of his siblings have caught on and keep telling him to get over her but how is he supposed to get over it when she is still there, stuck in his head like the bullet of one of those Amestrian firearms some of the guards are experimenting with.

Some people say that a teenager love is easily outgrown but here he is, the living proof for the opposite, and he is sick of people telling him that he is better of without her when – in reality – he is nothing without her calm attitude and the careful way she had guided him, nothing without the weapons she has handed him, poisoned words and the techniques of assassins. He never sees himself as her tool, as her creature because he is not hers but she is his dream, his final goal.

And come the day she returns, he would welcome her with open arms because with the pain gone, the magic can commence once again.


	3. in a city so dead

**_in a city so dead_**

* * *

**Characters**: Lei Yao, Jun Li

**Summary**: She waits for him.

**Companion:** 'still fighting dragons with you'

**Additional** to 'you are the silence in between'

* * *

Patience is a warrior's greatest virtue.

And ironically, it is also the trait she never perfected. No matter how fast she used to be, no matter how easily she had blended in with the shadows, she had never been as patient as she should have been. Now, she had learned patience.

She has learned it because she has been forced to. There is no second option for her. She cannot go back to Xing, she cannot face her grandfather and her family, she cannot return to the Imperial Court to resume her duties as commander of the Dragon Warriors.

She sometimes goes out, dresses up nicely and braids her hair and everything – just to see whether there is still someone who thinks that she is beautiful, that she is pretty enough to be desired. One or three civil wars and a pregnancy after the last time someone openly courted her, it is a burning question in the back of her mind to see whether she has another option – just in case that she can never return to Xing or that Lei will not take her back.

But most of the time, she does not think of what used to be. She rather considers her current activities. She has a reputation to defend, the reputation of someone who had never given in. The dragon within her skin, the fierce beast mocks her whenever she looks at it. She has once been the fiercest of the Dragon Warriors, she has once commanded the deadliest killers and the most loyal fighters, she has once been someone no one has dared to count out because she has always returned, more powerful and beautiful than she has been before. This is what she uses to be and this is what she will be again as soon as the loneliness vanishes from her soul, when she is reborn, stronger and more experienced than ever before.

She has not been perfect even when she has shone; her grandfather has scolded her so many times about her recklessness and the lack of patience in her actions. She wonders sometimes whether he would like her better know, whether he would appreciate the emotionless mask she wears every single day, whether he would be proud of her accomplishment to wait for so many years. Then again, knowing the old man, he is too busy protecting the little prince to remember her. She is not bitter, not anymore. She has lived a life of duty and honour, a life she has been meant to live since she had been born. She also knows that she has left her family behind in a state no better than the one she was in at the moment. Her sister would fill the position as the prince's second protector at one point because her cousin was too loyal to break the promise that he would forever protect her daughter. This is madness and she knows but she cannot bring herself to care about the battlefield she had left behind.

She is stuck in reserve and nothing works for her anymore. Her good looks are fading as her hair loses its old shine because she is unhappy and lonely and does not want to be beautiful anymore. She has been beautiful for him because he has loved her, because he has loved every single scar that traces her body and because he has been worth the annoyance of outgrowing her hair.

Without him, she has no reason left to dress up neatly. She cuts her hair mercilessly short and works at a restaurant while she moonlights in some rundown research institute as security. She is still faster and better than all of her co-workers but she no longer takes pleasure in this fact because it makes no difference anymore. In Xing, it was matter of life and death whether you were fast or not. Now, no one really cares about this.

Amestris is not like Xing and while she likes this at the beginning, it becomes torture at some point. Amestris has not the same dramatic thrill to it. No assassins, hardly any conspirators with secret agendas and plots to overthrow the government. This means, other than whatever is going on with the government. She dislikes most generals even though she has no reason to just because of a certain feeling in her gut. Central City feels like a snake's hole to her and she makes a point out of getting involved with no one attached to the army.

And while she waits and finally opens up her own restaurant, the Golden Dragon, the pain inside her chest starts to lessen as she numbed more and more with every passing day. And just before she reaches the end of her wits, he strolls into her restaurant and suddenly, the city is alive.


	4. aiming to succeed

**_aiming to succeed_**

**Character**: Chao

**Summary**: Thoughts of someone who was left behind.

* * *

He has known that he would be the one to stay behind, the one to deal with the family's affairs since he has been fifteen, since he has seen the way Prince Lei looks at Jun Li. And he has always been strangely okay with this because someone had to do the job and if no one else volunteers, he would do it.

His loyalty to his family becomes the trademark he curses the most frequently along the next few years because he is stuck with his duty, the duty to protect the family instead of some royal and when Jun Li casts aside honour and duty for love, he is the one to pick up the shambles of their family and he mends what he can put together again. But their family is broken, the old ambitions have ripped them apart and he has seen this coming because in his generation, there is too much strength. Their grandfather has been the last true warrior for a long time and now, there are suddenly three of them.

Jun Li, the dragon lady of scarlet and blood, the woman who has protected the emperor for a long time, who has bled in the name of a country none of them truly believes in – but they all have believed in Jun Yao, Prince Ling's grandfather because he has been one of them, a Yao.

He is three months older than her and technically her superior but he dislikes arguments and avoids them as much as he can and so he ignores the tough love she bestows over him, he ignore that every insult comes with a smile, that every punch is accompanied by an approving nod. Jun Li can play her mind games without him because he will never fall onto her level of trying so hard to please the elders that she loses herself. Tough love may be a concept in their family but he does not take part in it. Jun Li disappears on them after dishonouring their family and he takes it upon himself to deal with the remains of her brilliancy, with the remains of the light that has shone too bright. But he would fix this and when he has fixed himself, he would fix the entire family because he is _oh so_ sick of prejudice and arrogance, of backstabbing and hidden agendas.

Lan Fan is different too, trying to find a balance which is nearly impossible because their family is screwed-up and their ideals do not fit into the ever-changing country they live in. She is still the happiest member, calm and reserved – completely unfazed by Jun Li's growing rebellious attitude because she does not notice.

And while Lan Fan battles her way through Amestris and while Jun Li nearly breaks because she wants to come home, _goddamn it_, because she misses everyone, he is calmly establishing his claim as head of the family because he is the only option the family has because his father has too much business with the elders and everyone can see that Fu will not come home in one piece _– and the old man knows it, too._

Chao has never shied away from responsibility and he will sure as hell not start now. He has raised Min Li – the result of Jun Li's ultimate foolishness – for the girl's entire life and since he does not see himself marrying anyone for the next few years, he inevitable grooms her as his heiress, as the heiress to the family he has broken apart to put it back together.

He has changed the family into something good, into something better. There is no longer hatred for other, less fortunate members of the family because he will never stand for shunning again. He has seen how Min Li nearly has nearly broken apart – and she cannot be blamed for the circumstances of her birth because it is not like anyone could choose their parents.

Chao might not be a hero or someone popular but he is a good deal happier than anyone else because unlike most people, he can be content with what he gets instead wanting more and more. He has set his goals and he has reached them. He is thirty when he looks at a unified and generally happier clan. He has seen his share of the country while he travelled with Min Li, Lan Fan and the prince-turned-emperor-returned-to-being-prince called Ling. He can be happy because he has reached something in his life and because he has succeeded where his grandfather – may Fu rest in peace – has had to give up. Chao has lived through two civil wars in which he has defended his people. He has lived through depression and self-doubt. He has taken everything life has thrown at him but he has grown stronger, stronger than Jun Li who has grown fainter and whose scarlet scales have turned into silken dresses. He pities her, now, because she is still his cousin, his little sister whom he has protected once upon a time.

He is the one who was left behind, the one who never has had the chance to strive for glory and fame – and yet, he is the one who will be remembered for centuries to come. Jun Li and Lan Fan will fade – along with their respective husbands – into the grey mass of empresses and emperors while his name will stand for change and the birth of a new attitude towards life and honour because the example he sets, the way of forgiveness – especially towards own faults – and honouring family and the family's honour.

He is elected to leader of the village when he is just thirty-one and this is strange because he knows that Meimei is the better choice because she does not have a clan to lead but then again, this also means that she has turned down the position – probably because of her young age and she has been the one to scowl whenever they have met – which has been frequently along the years. Then again, she is wise beyond her age and she, too, knows that he is good news.

Yes, being left behind, being the one left out of everything turns out to be the best thing that ever happened to Chao because this is why he finally reaches everything he has ever dreamed of – and even more. He changes rules within the town, makes education easier available – and is called into the Imperial Council when he is fifty.

Chao is a hero without having gained fame on a battlefield.


End file.
